The drug regadenoson is safe and poses fewer side effects than the conventional medication used during a cardiac nuclear stress test of heart transplant patients, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study. Researchers say the 25 patients in the study did not experience adverse side effects such as abnormally low blood pressure or slow heart beat when regadenoson was used during the stress test...

The Washington Post: "In the hope of expanding a controversial form of organ donation into emergency rooms around the United States, a federally funded project has begun trying to obtain kidneys, livers and possibly other body parts from car-accident victims, heart-attack fatalities and other urgent-care patients...

An analysis of outcomes for live kidney donors in the U.S. over a 15 year period finds they have similar long-term survival rates compared to healthy individuals who were not kidney donors, according to a study in the March 10 issue of JAMA...

In a landmark study of more than 80,000 live kidney donors from across the United States, Johns Hopkins researchers have found the procedure carries very little medical risk and that, in the long term, people who donate one of their kidneys are likely to live just as long as those who have two healthy ones...

The first pooled kidney transplants involving three donor-recipient couples where each recipient received a kidney from a donor they did not know, has successfully taken place in the UK. The transplants took place at the end of 2009 and involved three hospitals, Hammersmith and Guy's and St Thomas' in London, and the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh...

Liver transplantation specialists recently convened to address U.S. guidelines for allocation of organs for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC, liver cancer). Representatives from more than 130 U.S. transplant centers were invited to the conference and participants included 180 leaders in liver transplantation (LT) from the 50 most active centers...

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee has voted 13 to 5 to recommend approval of belatacept, a selective co-stimulation blocker, for the prophylaxis of acute rejection in de novo kidney transplant patients...

One-third of people over the age of 65 wait longer than necessary for lifesaving, new kidneys because their doctors fail to put them in a queue for organs unsuitable to transplant in younger patients but well-suited to seniors, research from Johns Hopkins suggests...

Biologics, Inc., the leading cancer management company in the United States, announces that its Oncology Clinical Trial Services division has been selected by the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP), a nonprofit organization that facilitates unrelated hematopoietic cell transplants...